It is known that the accuracy rate of speech recognition applications is affected by the volume setting of the microphone used to capture the speech. To improve accuracy rate, attempts have made to allow for automatic optimization of the microphone volume. One such attempt is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,886, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, wherein volume is optimized by a multi-step process involving the comparison of multiple audio captures taken at different, predetermined volume levels. Depending on noise conditions and the initial microphone volume setting, a user may be required to provide several audio captures to determine the optimal microphone volume setting. Also, the user is required to remain silent for predetermined periods of time to allow for determination of the noise level.